Meddlesome Moth Is Throwing a Week-Long Birthday Party with Rare Beer

Design District stalwart Meddlesome Moth celebrates its fourth birthday this week. The last fourth birthday party I attended featured a face painter, a quarter sheet cake from Costco, and a trove of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot merchandise. The proprietors of the Dallas Observer's favorite beer wall, however, will be celebrating in a much different fashion. Every night this week, they have scheduled dinners with the owners of several national breweries (Breckenridge, Founders, among others), and have also completely reset their beer menu.

Yesterday I spoke with Matt Quenette, Meddlesome Moth's beer director, to ask him about the birthday bash. Quenette was up until 5 a.m. on Monday rearranging and resetting the taps, and he told me that this tradition goes back to their first year.

"After we had been open for a full year, we were so excited that we'd made it that far. I wanted to do something special, and since craft beer is such a big part of what we do, I changed the whole menu to reward our customers."

Three years later, Quenette and his crew can plan even better. He squirrels away unique and hard-to-find kegs every season to make this week's beer menu as wonderful and unique as possible. "Throughout the year, I'm able to get my hands on treats, unicorns or white whales," he says. "Of course, we use some of them, but I also store some away to create one menu that true beer geeks will go crazy for once a year."

Looking over the list, the menu isn't nearly as random as I'd expect from a yearlong search for obscure kegs. It's not something I'd take my Busch-swilling Uncle Pete to; certainly, but it's not totally inaccessible for the mere beer fan as opposed the beer nerd. "I kept that in mind and I'm hoping we have created a menu that will let fans go to the next level," Quenette says.

The most exciting ones look to be Stone Brewing Co.'s Reason Be Damned (Belgian-style ale) and Candela Rye from Green Flash Brewing Co. and Cigar City. The event I'm most excited about is Friday's Firestone Walker Barrel Night. A local beer manager can make waves by getting a hold of just one of Firestone Walker's barrel-aged brews, but Friday night the Moth will feature seven different barrel-aged beers from one of the country's best breweries.

The Moth stayed open late last night 10 p.m. tonight to reveal their MetaMothosis Draught List. The full menu is available on their Facebook page, as well as the listings for all of the special events.